1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to the field of software testing and more particularly to automated software testing.
2. Description of the Related Art
Automated software testing relates to the functional testing of a software application. Automated testing tools allow end users to create, modify and run functional, distributed functional, regression and smoke tests for applications built using any of a wide variety of integrated development environments. In this regard, the conventional functional testing tool can generate a test script for an application in which the logical components of the application can be exercised both sequentially and conditionally. Through a thorough testing of the application, the automated testing tools can identify defects early, often and repeatably.
While automating the testing process for a simple, localized application can be routine, automating the testing process for a large, complex application which spans multiple computing hosts and involves multiple code sections, configuration files and user interface documents can be problematic to say the least. To address the testing of large, complex applications for stress, scalability and performance, scenarios can be produced which emulate real-world operating conditions for the application. Each scenario can be processed by the testing tool to identify faults in the application. Yet, the sequential processing of scenarios can be time consuming and inefficient—especially where the number of scenarios is great. Specifically, the time required to compose a test bucket, to execute the test bucket and to perform problem determination in the case of a test failure can be substantial.